More Quotations

More of our favorite quotations for your enjoyment.

"It is a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make them simple." -- unknown

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Chesire cat in a tree."Which road do I take?" she asked.His response was a question: "Where do you want to go?""I don't know," Alice answered"Then it doesn't matter."

"The real trick is to find a reason to believe, in spite of all of this. And the Big Secret is, what you're looking for, you're looking with." -- Ray Wylie Hubbard

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." -William Arthur Ward

"I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way." -Edgar Guest

"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet." -Roger Miller

"I learn, by going, where I have to go." -- Theodore Roethke

"We tend to make the thing in the way the way." -- Mark Nepo

"The greedy one gathered all the cherries, while the simple one tasted all the cherries in one." -- Mark Nepo

"Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Some get spiritual because they see the light, and some 'cause they feel the heat." -- Ray Wylie Hubbard

"No plan survives contact with the enemy." -- military adage

"Doubt is to be expected, but not obeyed." -- Kevin Carroll

"What if the hokey pokey is what's all about?" -- bumper sticker

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way." -- Rollo May

"What is not ex-pressed, is de-pressed." -- Mark Nepo

"It is the courage to be authentic that keeps us strong enough to withstand the heartbreak through which enlightenment can occur. And it is by honoring how life comes through us that we get the most out of living, not by keeping ourselves out of the way. The goal is to mix our hands in the earth, not to stay clean." -- Mark Nepo

"To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, to that extent we dissolve our fear. The synonym for total fearlessness is full enlightenment - wholehearted, open-minded interaction with our world." -- Pema Chodron

"Once she ceased expecting, she ceased being angry, for anger is really disappointed hope." -- Erica Jong, Parachutes and Kisses

"Time and time again, I have found myself at this crucial juncture: having to admit that what was essential is no longer essential and then needing to summon the courage to make the act of living essential again." -- Mark Nepo

"Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them." -Alvin Toffler

"One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person." -William Feather

"I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Originally the word power meant able to be. In time, it was contracted to mean to be able. We suffer the difference." -- Mark Nepo

"There are Rules and there are Laws. The Rules are made by men who think that they know better how to fly your airplane than you. Laws (of Physics) were made by the Great One. You can, and sometimes should, suspend the Rules, but you can never suspend the Laws."About Rules:a. The rules are good place to hid if you don't have a better idea and the talent to execute it.b. If you deviate from a rule, it must be a flawless performance. (e.g., if you fly under a bridge, don't hit the bridge.)." -- Unknown

"The only problem with common sense is that it isn't very common." -- Unknown

"History is a vast early warning system." --Norman Cousins

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business." -- Henry Ford

"I had a perspective on the booing, because they can kill you with kindness too." -- Bob Dylan

"To let knowledge produce troubles and then use knowledge to prepare against them, is like stirring water in hopes of making it clear." -- Lao Tzu

"Work when there is work to do. Rest when you are tired. One thing done in peace will most likely be better than ten things done in panic... I am not a hero if I deny rest; I am only tired." -- Susan McHenry

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." -- Michel De Montaigne

"Though the Earth is touched by everything alive, it never stops turning around the fire at its center, and though we are touched by the stories of strangers and the far off songs of birds lost in the wind, we find our way by following the spirits voice at our center. Too much is lost in waiting for someone else to tell us what moves us is real." -- Mark Nepo

"It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." -- Abraham Lincoln

"We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach." --Bertrand Russell

"There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."--Logan Pearsall Smith

"True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive." -- Mignon McLaughlin

"You can shoot all the bluebirds you want, but you must remember that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird... Mockingbirds cause no harm... They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us." -- Harper Lee

"The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much." -- Germain G. Glien

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" -- Ursula K. LeGuin

"If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves." -- Confucius

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." -- Shunryu Suzuki

"To direct the mind toward the basic unity of all things and to divert it from the seizing of the differences, therein lies bliss." -- Tejo-Bindeu Upanishad

"And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom." -- Anais Nin

"It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed." -- Mark Nepo

"Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is "finding his place in the world," while really it is finding its place in him." -- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

If not now when?--Mark Nepo

"Let your life be the explanation, rather than explaining your life." -- unknown

"Tragedy stays alive by feeling what's been done to us, while peace comes alive by living with the results." -- Mark Nepo

"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not ot exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." -- Jack London

“It ain’t bragging if you done it.” -- Dizzy Dean

"Nothing is as pressingas the one who's pressingwould like you to believe"--Bright Eyes

"It is so over when you're done." -- unknown

"I never paint blue dog purple, except for when I do." -- George Rodrigue

"Every new day works for us." -- Arsene Wenger, Arsenal Football Club coach on how when a player is learning, each new lesson and day moves them forward relative to the opposition.

"A pint of Guinness in a bar full of Miller Lites" -- Associate Press review of Jimmy LaFave

"They couldn't wait for success so they went on without it," -- Dallas, MC of Strawberry Music Festival on the roots band Marley's Ghost

"The blues isn't about me feeling bad, it is about making someone else feel bad." -- Harry Manx, blues singer

"After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me asthe woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert townwhere the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it; peopleeven moved from there because they couldn't stand the wind. The reasonI made friends with the wind -- with reality -- is that I discovered Ididn't have a choice. I realized that it's insane to oppose it. When Iargue with reality, I lose -- but only 100 percent of the time. How doI know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!" -- Bryon Katie

Children's Property Laws (or anyone wanting a court)

1. If I like it, it's mine.

2. If I can take it from you, it's mine.

3. If I had it a little while ago, it's mine

4. If it is mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.

5. If it looks like mine, it's mine.

6. If it's yours and I steal it, it's mine.

7. If I think it's mine, it's mine.

8. If it's broken, it's yours.

--Jane Seabrook, Furry Logic

"If you are injured, you don't play. If you play, you're not injured." -- Harry Hopman, Tennis Coach

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together --- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." -- George Eliot

"Every man's memory is his private literature." -- Aldous Huxley

"Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror." -- Carlos Fuentes

"To suffering there is a limit, to fearing, none." Francis Bacon

"It is better to have bad dreams and a good life, then to have good dreams and a bad life."

"Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humaness. We gamble. Some do it at the gambling table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play." -- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

"If you are going through hell, keep going." -- Winston Churchill

"The Universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make of it." -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

"You shall not change, but a nobler race of men shall walk beneath the stars and wander by the shore." -- William Roscoe Thayer

"If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" -- Rabbi Hillel

"There is no such thing as choking, only a lack of concentration." -- Rod Laver

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does the truth become error because no one will see it." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"Beneath most headaches is a heart ache." -- Mark Nepo

"Discipline: doing what was possible with consistency." -- Judith Lasater

"Do what you can, and do it fully." -- Judith Lasater

"Practice is not about what you get, but about what you give." Judith Lasater

"Evil is like a shadow -- it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You can not cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it." -- Shakti Gawain

On the occasion of reading a book to solve a problem, an eleven year old boy remarked, "Hey, this is just like school, only I learned something."

"You spend a lot of time together [with the touring pro] and you get to know each other and you can spend hours to arrive at a breakthrough that takes a minute. My job is to understand how these players think and how they learn. It's not just a matter of transferring data and saying, 'do it this way.'" -- top touring pro coach

"Defeat is not unthinkable. You have to accept you might lose but what is important is that you believe you can win. And, if I didn't believe we could win..., I wouldn't be sitting here." -- Arsene Wenger, Arsenal Football Club manager.

"There [is] a very thin line between winning and losing ... but that is sport. The winner is praised beyond reason and the team who do not win is slaughtered beyond reason." -- Arsene Wenger

"Each of you are perfect the way you are... and you can use a little improvement." -- Suzuki Roshi

"I often tell parents that I am working with that hell is having children and thinking there's such a thing as a good parent.... So the goal I would suggest is not to be perfect parents, it's to become progressively less stupid parents." -- Marshall Rosenberg

"Man alone, of all the creatures of the earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest discovery in our generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." -- William James

"Take it in, take it all in. Now is the time that will not come again. Take it in, take it all in. This is the day, and it is here for the living." -- The Waifs

"Work as if you live in the early years of a better nation." -- Alastair Gray

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now." -- unknown

"Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a stick." -- Will Rogers

"Our character is what we do when we think that no one is looking." -- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in." -- Teddy Roosevelt

"The Blues are not about feeling bad, they are about making other folks feel bad." Harry Manx, Strawberrry Music Festival Fall 07

"Outcome is passive. But the process is active." Steve Stefanki, pro tour coach

"You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange." -- A. K. Ramanujan, poet

"To be nobody but myself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." -- E.E. Cummings

"Innovation is the difference between a leader and a follower." -- Steve Jobs

"Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it." -- Chinese Proverb

"In difficulty lies opportunity." -- Albert Einstein "The years teach much that the days never knew." Ralph Waldo Emerson "You can ovserve a lot by watching." -- Yogi Berra "I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion." -- Mia Hamm "Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full courrent of human life." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You only notice a foundation when it fails." -- Bob Love

"No greater that you can give than your time." -- Bob Love

"There is no such thing as teaching, only learning." -- Dr. Eugene P. Smith

"First they will disagree, because they are kids." -- Rick Macci on being persistent in teaching children. "We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating invonlentarily the virtues, the defects, the movements and the characters of those among who we live." -- Joesph Joubert "Champions keep going when normal people stop." -- Arsene Wenger "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." -- Spren Kierkegaard "The years teach much that the days never knew. -- Ralph Waldo Emmerson "If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking." -- George Patton

About us

The Orindawoods Tennis Club is an excellent tennis facility. We are located in Orinda, California, just 25 minutes east of San Francisco. The Club features seven championship courts, plus a pro shop, locker room, sauna, and pool.